Streaming over Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) has become a popular approach for delivering multimedia content (e.g., audio, video, etc.) over the Internet, for example, to set top boxes, Internet ready televisions, computers, wireless devices, and the like. Multimedia content may be made available at a variety of different bit rates, resolutions, minimum and/or maximum bandwidths, and may be available from multiple sources.
HTTP streaming clients, such as Wireless Transmit/Receive Units (WTRUs), may employ streaming rate adaptation. Such streaming rate adaptation approaches may apply single step or step-wise scale-up/scale down techniques, for example, to maximize a bandwidth utilization ratio. However, such rate adaptation techniques may result in sudden and/or noticeable changes in playback quality that may be objectionable to end users, for instance, end users concerned with one or more of the following: a constant perceived frame rate; minimal noticeable quality variations; consistent clarity of video and/or audio material throughout an entirety of a multimedia streaming session; the ability to access the streaming multimedia content from different devices with minimal interruptions; etc.
Additionally, some streaming rate adaptation approaches may fail to satisfactorily address networking resource sharing among multiple streaming clients and/or the splitting of bandwidth among various streaming media components such as video, audio, timed-text, and/or slides (e.g., presentation slides).